Making Hay in Nairobi

This was my first poetry class ever. I have to admit that i don’t go out of my way seeking poetry, let alone attend a Masterclass. When I registered for this class, I was seeking a justification for avoiding poetry. All that was about to change.

Tony Mochama is possibly the most relaxed poet I have come across. The class was informal and our teacher said he wanted everything to happen impromptu. Our first exercise involved finding a transitional object and writing about it, all in 5 minutes which passed too quickly. When we got back to class, we all had to read our poems out loud. As Fate would have it, I was up first. It was surprisingly good.

Next, we were paired up with members of the opposite sex and had to write about each other and then read the resulting poem out loud. That’s when all the fun began. My partner wrote about my smile reminding him of Mona Lisa, how my eyes sparkled when I smiled, how unforgettable I was. I digress.

Mochama was impressed with the calibre of poetry produced on that day. As a result, the group ‘Impromptu Poets’ was born. We will have a Google group shortly and will continue to explore poetry on the spot.

Poetry on the spot is possible, when you don’t obsess about being perfect. There’s alway’s something to write about. In Mochama’s words, “Don’t wait for the Muse. Snatch her from the air.”

Julie Muriuki

Day 2

The Nairobi National Museum favors orange–the stoic buildings are either painted some shade of orange or are stained orange by the residue of orange soil.

This city reminds me of Johannesburg only because it fascinates me to be in a Black Country where people dress as if they live in a temperate climate.  Of course they do.  It’s colder in September.

Men wear jackets and schoolboy sweaters, avoid sandals and carry umbrellas.  The women, without a doubt, relish the leather, sweaters, scarves, inner and outer blouses – all those choices of layering and color that make women enjoy colder climates for fashion reasons.  Socks, stockings, balaclavas, layers of cloth–it is Africa, and it is not the Africa I was born in.

Of course I can’t pretend it’s not familiar.  Nairobi is a city – large version of the large mountain town, Mandeville, in the parish of Manchester in Jamaica.  The similarity in landscape, climate, manner and fashion is uncanny.  We, misty, cool, close.  The English liked Mandeville.  They adore Nairobi for probably the same reasons: landscape in their own image.

For my first session earlier in the day, I had a fine time meeting aspiring poets, talking to them and offering advice about publishing and poetry today.  I am slowly learning more about the festival.

What impresses me most about Storymoja is its dogged commitment to youth, to the encouragement of school age children in creative thought, art and literary confidence.  Over three thousand children were at the festival on Friday to listen to writers talk about their work, to meet authors like Atinuke, a gifted Nigerian children’s author and several East African authors.  They had an excursion that celebrates literature. Three thousand is more than double the number they had last year.  This is remarkable and wonderful.

Storymoja gets writers out to schools to do readings and workshops for children.  It is Storymoja that has established a generous and innovative project to help install libraries in schools around the country.

According to Muthoni Garland (Storymoja Founder) less than ten percent of the schools in Kenya have libraries.  In the last year, Storymoja has established 37 libraries in schools.  Part of the proceeds of tickets at the festival will go towards this really important and achievable project.

I learned today that Storymoja has established a new imprint for East African romance novels all to be published digitally.  One of the authors, a Ugandan filmmaker with literary ambitions said that the publishing team has been savvy about trying to make the series popular, marketable and successful.  It will be formatted for cell phones and tablets, but mainly cell phones.  It is a smart, forward thinking idea that has fully assessed the new realities.  We are yet to see if this will work in Africa given the limits on the number of smart phones and tables available to people, but it is a start.  Libraries are not available for young people, but cell phones abound.  Bring the two together and you have a smart strategy.  I remain concinced that books, physical books, remain necessary.

Storymoja is not a literary festival in the strictest sense.  It is a cultural festival and one that has sought to draw attention and audience participation by introducing thematic subjects for debate and discussion at the festival.  This year a sexologist will talk about sex, athletes will be interviewed about their careers as world-class athletes, international political figures will discuss world political issues, and a panel of cultural figures will discuss the issue of “shadeism” in Africa and its diaspora.  At the same time, writers are leading exciting and interesting creative workshops for children.

Some of the marquee performances of the evening include a major play, a spoken word performance adapted for the stage, a couple of bands, and much else.  These are, like most that happens at the festival, paying events.  Hosted at the National Museum, there is a quality of value and classiness surrounding these events, but the challenge is to find a strong audience presence.

I have heard it said several times by organizers that the last two years have ben marked by a significant shift in the kind of writers that have appeared at the festival.  In the first three years of its staging, the connection with the Wales Hay festival was stronger in terms of the programing.  The vast majority of the writers invited were, as one of the organizers said, “European”.  My impression is that the roster was drawn from writers who attended the UK festival who might be tempted to visit Kenya.  I do find this to be a curious approach, one that may have been driven by the funding possibilities through the British Council and Hay Festival sponsors.

It is clear, though, that for an African Festival to be so Eurocentric would have to be cause for some concern.  This year the contingent of African writers has been significant.  I suspect that this has altered the tenure of the festival and even its organization.

Such a varied range of interests and challenges can pose some problems for the festival, but I can’t be certain.  What I can say is that without the dogged commitment to the book and to writers—a willful privileging of this aspect—the festival could become something else.

I am not playing journalist here at this event.  I am just a writer looking at how things are going and wondering.  Perhaps as I learn more, I will be able to fill some of the gaps I am seeing in my understanding of how this Storymoja Festival is organized and run.

In the meantime, the sun has pushed though.  Yesterday’s cold and gloom has burned away.  This is good news.  I will see what else I can encounter at Storymoja.

DAY 3

Many years ago, fourteen, to be exact, Colin Channer, the brilliant Jamaican novelists and general perfect person to be touring anywhere with, especially when laughter is desperately need, we’re on tour in the UK, and having together a collective experience of attending festivals around the world decided to make another of our many lists (we had already done our top ten seventies patwa phrases, our top ten non-righteous reggae songs of the seventies, our top ten shared memories of life in Kingston, Jamaica in the seventies without ever actually meeting–we are talking a half degree so separation here), a top ten list of things that irritate writers and make them resentful about a literary event we have been invited to.  We concluded that in truth, the needs of writers were quite modest as guests, and especially so if the top ten things were dealt with.  It was that list that led to the next statement, “we should create our own festival” using this list.  These days I test the success of a festival on the basis of this list:

1.   When the organizers do not know much about your work–when it is clear that no one organizing the festival has actually read your work.

2.  When it is clear that some writers are treated with far more deference and privilege than others because of some tier system

3.   When some writers are paid and others are not

4.   When the accommodations suck, and no one seems to know what to do about it

5.   When the PA system sucks, or does not exist

6.   When the organizers ask you to bring your own books to sell because they have not arranged to order your books for sale.

7.   When it actually costs you to attend the festival

8.   When you have to ask for water on stage.

9.    When the lighting on stage is so bad you can’t see what you are reading

10.  When there is no one identifiable who can handle your questions or concerns thoughtfully, and efficiently

11.    When the celebration of literature and writers s hijacked by the cult of celebrity or politicians

12.   When the hosts do not appear to value your presence

13.   When what has been communicated about your expected activities at the event is changed without consultation with you or without any warning

14.   When undue pressure is placed on the author to do things not agreed to before through a “guilting” or collective pressure.

15.   When the selling and signing of books is treated as an after thought–a kind of optional annoyance

16.   When it is never quite clear what is happening in the program until it happens

17.   When the media about the event and programs and brochures either omit you or get much of the information wrong

18.   When the organizers tacitly blame you if the audience is not a large enough one

19.   When the audience does not know how to act at readings–talking, using cell phones, etc. and the organizers do not intervene

20.  When you have the feeling that the event is using you to promote the work of its own people.

Obviously, we came up with more than ten, but I find that they still hold true.  Since coming to StoryMoja, I can add a 21st.

21.  When the high point in terms of how it a valued by the hosts, of an opening night is a couple of international supermodels, called without any irony, “celebrities” come on stage and announce that they have adopted between them eight baby elephants.

Nobody asked me to adopt an elephant.  I did sign a petition earlier in the day against the poaching if elephants, and I would gladly have told my touching elephant story, but despite being one of the invited writers to the festival, I was not allowed to say anything, even though I had been told that I would, with all the guest writers, be asked to read for three minutes at the opening ceremony.  Four of thirty writers were given that privilege.  I remain bothered by this.  Not a good look.  Not a good look at all.  I hope to talk to Muthoni Garland, the festival’s founder, about this.

Storymoja, of course, has managed to avoid many of the above list, but I do think that such a list is a handy one for writers and organizers to use to begin assessing the relative success of their festival.

Of course I am blogging for Storymoja and if you read this, it means that the festival is open enough to accept some criticism.  A few years ago, I would have said nothing.  I would worry about being re-invited or something.  But I am too old for that now.  The festival miss-stepped.  It put the authors second to the officials, the organizers, the non-writing celebrities, and it sent a wrong message to the writers and to the audience.

Colin and I made a second list as we got into things.  We decided to create a list of the things that an audience wants in a literary festival – the things that will make them return each year in larger and larger numbers.  The two lists combined and condensed became the operation value system for Calabash, and as long as we stayed faithful to them, we saw success.

Experience has taught me that on the road when you run into a dinner buffet choice, avoid it no matter how fancy the outfit is.  That rule, I broke in Nairobi only because the staff at the Sankara were so charming, so gregarious and relaxed.  The snapper was like butter.  I mean, the buffet snapper was a delicately braised, elegant piece of the delectable that I could not even complain that when I asked for hot pepper they gave me Tabasco on a platter. The sweet potato soup was a nuanced thug that should have had a title with the word infusion unit.  Slivers of aromatic herb dancing around.  The closest to Lorna’s squash bisque with scotch bonnet seed.  So I had the buffet with the to-the-edge jasmine rice, whole before melting in the mouth, the medley of tomato filled salads with a streak of sautéed mushrooms that made me pause at the flesh flashback I had.  I am going on about dinner at my hotel because here is my confession:

I have been in Nairobi for twenty four hours, having landed at eight o’clock in the recovering Kenyatta airport that was burned to the ground some months ago, and the only exotica I have seen are the paintings in my beautifully laid out and designed room. Driving into the city, the driver smiled wryly and said that the fire was the work of drug dealing arsonists.  This was, he said, his theory though he had no prove.

Apparently the destroyed airport was second in size and sophistication and modernity only to the international airport in Johannesburg, and the advent of some new, advanced drug detection equipment had led to some high profile drug busts in the past year. Now the dealers were having a hey-day with the equipment destroyed and the vaunted efficiency jeopardized.

I may be making all of this up. I was half asleep.  But I know he said a minister had been killed by drug loads with carbon monoxide pumped into a train.  I need to check that story out. At the Sankara my bag was searched at the door.  The security guy smiled and said that I have to remember than Kenya is bordered by countries that are currently in the midst of civil wars and terrorist disquiet.

My hotel is lovely. Lots of light wood paneling, exotic animals in paintings, and one decidedly risqué image of a man engaging a woman.  You can see for yourself. Maybe it us just me. Now, my window overlooks a parking lot and a busy round about, so there is plenty of locale flavour to see from the fifth floor.  The slow traffic – I think silver and white are the law for car colors in Kenya – the men in long sleeves and dark slacks darting across streets, and the women, sensibly warm and miraculous in their easy unhurried efficiency making their way through the city.  That’s it.

The rest is television, and I have been watching African Soap operas.  Why does Hulu not have a whole section devoted to these?  I am hooked.  I admit it, there is one thing so affirming, something inexplicably comforting about seeing black people behaving like black people despite some silly dialogue and absurd plots.  I like these people, their mannerisms, their languid sprawl on sofas, the kitschy furniture, the hair, the hair, the hair!

And someone has to say this loudly: Nigerians have, by the sheer arrogance of their sense of equality and superiority to all things American, somehow, taken Americans delicate television ways and turned it wholly African in a way that has been matched by only one other group, the Nigerians of the Caribbean, Jamaicans.  Say what you will about Nollywood, it is brash, rollicking, defiant, and, well, not to put fine a point on it, African.  The other soaps reveal their own regional and national distinctions, but the Nigerians are the taste makers.

The Kenyan soap is fascinating for its comfort with dark interiors, sophisticated issues, and the rituals of politeness that define even the crudest of exchanges.  I need a grant to study these soaps.  I mean really study them for what they offer us about twenty first century Africa. Then there are those soaps in African languages and you can’t miss the ease of performance, the lyric energy and conviction of the performers.  It is amazing how the use of English is pure performance, a level of ritual that complicates language and meaning, class and culture.

I am in Nairobi for the Storymoja Hay Festival.  I wish Hay was not their model.  I wish they had come to Calabash in Jamaica and borrowed some of our deep commitment to making our authors feel as if they are nineteenth century students at Oxford University with a bevy of folks to meet their every whim.  The Brits, as the Dutch in Rotterdam said to me again and again, run their festivals like they run their lives–no frills, stiff upper lips, frugal, avoiding crowds, leaving folks to look after themselves and treating authors like nineteen century writers from Oxford who pretend not to care so much about money because they own land and really can afford to be aristocratic about their art.  They deflect hard questions be feigning ignorance in a manner that feels like polite disdain.  Maybe Kenyans are more British than I thought.  Of course, the festival will be well run and decent and in order, and, given my experiences in other places, that is not such a bad thing.

And I am saying all this having not met anyone as yet and sitting in my hotel room reading emails and watching soaps.  In other words, I should not be trusted.  No doubt I am going to eat my words.  I deserve to, even if only as a reminder that everyday cannot be a butter-delicate snapper day.

Tomorrow I meet Teju Cole, Warsan Shire, Clifton Gachagua whose work I have devoured with admiration and tremendous pleasure, and I see again, Kofi Awoonor, Nii Kwei Parkes, and so many others who are doing marvelous work as Ghanians from quite different generational ends of the spectrum.  I expect this to be a good time for promoting the African Poetry Book Fund, for running into Binyavanga, and for meeting all the Kenya connections I have made over the years.

I get in the Discovery Hall where my workshop is five minutes after the start of my session and blank. No. Not my mind. The room. Aside from the interns for Storymoja who are coordinating everything there is only one person who has turned up for my workshop. This is a far cry from 10 in the morning when Teju ‘Mos Def’ Cole did his workshop. Then the house was so full that some people had to sit on the tables at the back. I have never suffered from as much ink envy as I did then. Also Nigerian envy. And Faber & Faber envy. And penis envy. Because at this time I am certain that I would have had a full house if I were a great male writer published by Faber & Faber of Nigerian descent.

But then I recall the words of one of my friends. “If you have one person or three people, treat them as though they are the most important person in the room and give them as much attention as you would do a full room.” As you may have guessed, my friend is also as much of a loser writer as I feel at this moment. But I make the best of a bad situation and I talk to this woman.

I ask what she does and why she is in the workshop. She tells me she is a yoga instructor. Just what I need at this time. Someone to bring me peace. As I am about to ask her for relaxation tips on how to be happy at the lack of an audience, people start trickling in. And as more people walk in, we can no longer have everyone introducing themselves because we need to get to the issue that brought everyone here. The room is soon full. I realize that the reason why everyone was on time for Teju’s panel and not on time for mine may just be because they were observing African Time. After all, even I did not make it on time.

We are soon talking about all things writing. We laugh. Questions are asked on what differentiates creative nonfiction from fiction (I have my answer, what’s yours?) and we even get morbid once or twice as everyone in the room chats about how they would like to die (a little exercise to see whether something as serious as death can ever be spoken of in a humourous way. When we are done we all agree, death is funny.

Before I know it, the intern at the back is telling me I have five more minutes left. You may want to claim it was because people arrived late but I like to think it was because we were having a lot of fun. Cheers Storymoja.

As we get closer to Kawangware, the streets get tighter.  Sugar cane grows on the earth verge at the side of the road.  Vegetable gardens, neat and ordered and stand to attention in tight rows.  A woman, just beginning her garden, pulls up weeds in a sea of weeds.

The shop fronts are painted with bold and beautiful signs.  DARLING! WE CARE HOW YOU LOOK, MOST PERFECT PAINT SHOP, KLUB LONDON.  The walls are painted with instructions. ABSTAIN.  BE FAITHFUL.  USE A CONDOM (we presume this is multiple choice).

The market is crowded with people. Open grain sacks are packed together, cells in a school biology diagram. Sofas and armchairs in loud animal print look like resting leopards, a furniture safari. Mattresses piled high make me think of the Princess and the Pea.

After the market, Kawangware Public Primary School is spacious and calm, with grass playing fields and two covered courtyards.  Some of the children have been making paper kites, studded with bougainvillea flowers, fitted with tails and tassels.  One boy’s kite is covered in numbers, a page from a maths book. They run together towards the fields and the kites dance at their shoulders like landing birds.

The smaller kids are shy and daring at the same time.  They wave and smile and push the braver ones amongst them forward to say HELLO and HOW ARE YOU? Then they crowd around us, ready for a conversation.

Their names are Tabitha and Michael and Esther and Joyce and Cynthia and Adam.  They love stories. They love magic stories and animal stories and adventure stories and funny stories.  Sad stories they don’t like so much.

A teacher welcomes us.  His name is Edward.  His tie is covered in trumpets.  He is a good teacher. You can tell just by looking at him.  His voice is gentle and he makes the children laugh.

The head teacher’s name is Miriam.  She invites us into her office for tea and boiled eggs and bananas and sweet cakes and soda.  From the windows of her office you can see the children playing.   But the first thing I notice is the trophy. I can’t take my eyes off it.  It is huge.

The girls’ choir competed at national level in the Kenyan Music Competition.  They sang a song called Sweet Spring. Miriam says they will sing it for us before we go.

We leave the office and go to meet all of the children in the courtyard. Wangare tells them a story about a farmyard. They make all the right animal noises at all the right times.  Then we give them some books, and guess what they do?  They READ.  Right there in the crowd with all the pushing and jostling they stop still and read.  The books enclose them in quiet islands. The books keep them in story bubbles, small pockets of peace.  This is why we came.

Author Jenny Valentine investigates a book with a STD 1. student at Kawangware Primary School during the #JazaMatatu na Vitabu Mini Launch.

And then the choir sings.

When I am old and replaying the better snapshots of my life, the Kawangware Public Primary School Girls’ Choir will be there, singing.

It is the Sweetest Spring I ever heard.

The trophy isn’t big enough.

The Storymoja Hay Festival officially begins tomorrow! But in the meantime we have been busy! Yesterday, I took the festival to two orphanages, SOS Children’s Villages and Mama Fatuma. The children in both places were bright and beautiful and the staff who ensure that they are cared for are dedicated and inspiring beyond words.

Atinuke Reading for Children at SOS Nairobi

It was a privilege to read my “Anna Hibiscus” and “No.1 Car Spotter” stories to them. And to tell them traditional tales from the Diaspora. In turn they shared with me some fabulous traditional Kenyan tales!! Tales I will now be telling to children all over the world! A generous sponsor is all it would take for these bright and beautiful children to attend the Storymoja Hay festival itself!

The Storymoja Hay Festival starts on Thursday. But for me, Atinuke (of “The No.1 Car Spotter” series), it started last night sitting in the kitchen of Muthoni Garland (of Storymoja) and Mara Menzies (of Toto Tales) marinading some sweet chicken. We were not only marinading chicken, of course, we were marinading our minds; sharing stories and swapping ideas and philosophies late into the night. If last night was the appetiser then I am truly hungry now for a great Storymoja Hay Festival!

This is my first trip to Nairobi, the first time I have ever set foot on African ground. And what a welcome!

After the Airport fire in August, we expected long queues at the airport, but everyone swept through in an instant. And now I have a Kenyan visa in my passport, the first souvenir of my visit.

Simon met us outside and managed to fit our more than 60 kilos of  books and other equipment into his ordinary car. Six suitcases and three women!  Do you know Dr Who in Kenya? Have you heard about the TARDIS?  Ordinary on the outside maybe, but inside it contains multitudes.

The hotel is tucked away in Westlands on the edge of the forest, I am told, Wangari Maathai worked to save. The man who opened the gates put his arm into the car and shook hands with everyone. At reception, they said that we would stay for a year and nothing less.  It is brand new.  Everything shines. The furniture waits patiently for us to use it, to sit and lean and eat and sleep.  We stayed up late on the terrace beneath the lit trees, drinking wine and talking into the quiet.

And because we arrived in the dark, I saw little; only lights and traffic and the tops of loud buildings. I had the daylight still to come.  This morning we drove to the Storymoja office and I filed these pictures in my memory: a fruit stand, edged with potted plants and a boy, waiting for customers; cars being washed outside the kindergarten, water shining on the tarmac yard; one man walking a dusty pug, another walking two Alsatian puppies; a boy with red trousers and a walking stick, smiling into the car.

I will use these snapshots later. I will return to them and they will find their way into a story, into an imagined scene. They will feed my imagination when I am home and it is winter and my world is grey with rain.

Gates line the roads so that I wonder what is behind them all and I am curious to know.

And then to the Storymoja pink gates, which open onto a pretty yard. And the green office, like a warren, crowded with new faces and a smiling Nairobi welcome.

Karibu sana!